A nice story on the silver or gold lining of global warming with all the green jobs generated, with more similar statistics attached below as excerpts from the source.

The number of jobs created was what was compared to the pharmaceutical industry, not the revenue generated or anything to do with money where I suspect the pharmaceutical industry would reverse the ratio. It was a bit unfair of the source, UNEP, to pick a big industry that is growing but in no way to the extent, but which makes a lot of money so it has a big presence in people’s minds. [Envirostats author]

- The renewable energy programmes in Germany and Spain are merely ten years old but have already created several hundred thousand jobs.

- The Indian city of Delhi is introducing new eco-friendly compressed natural gas buses that will create an additional 18,000 new jobs. - The ethanol programme in Brazil has created half a million jobs and its bio-diesel programme is specifically designed to benefit hundreds of thousands of mostly poor smallholder farmers.

- By the year 2020, Germany will have more jobs in the field of environmental technologies than in its entire automotive industry.

- In Europe, a 20 per cent increase in energy efficiency would create about a million jobs. The same applies in emerging and developing countries.

- United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Press Release, Dec 6 2007

Tons are suspected to be metric tonnes due to the kilograms used in other parts of the article despite the tons spelling.

World population of 6.6 billion was used to get some per capita statistics not mentioned in source article.

I don’t know what is a sufficient amount of grain per person, but the more important issue is properly distributing this resource. Despite less food being available per person than in 1986, far less if you factor in the biofuels demands because the world didn’t have that resource withdrawal to any significant extent in 1986, there is no big famine in the much more evident media these days than was in the 1980s when there seemed to have been a famine in Africa for most of the second half of the decade.

Despite growing harvests, several factors are actually decreasing the amount of grain available per person as food, which peaked at 376 kilograms in 1986:

• Industrial livestock production requires large amounts of grain, particularly corn. Grain, in conjunction with soybeans, provides the primary source of livestock feed: in total, roughly one third (35 percent) of the world’s grain becomes feed.
• Ethanol and other fuels now consume 17 percent of the world’s grain harvest. Worldwide, the amount of course grains (a group that includes corn, barley, sorghum, and other grains fed mainly to animals) converted to energy jumped 15 percent in 2007 to 255 million tons, although this is small compared with the 627 million tons devoted to livestock feed. The 255 million tons is course grains only, not all grains.
• In recent decades, annual growth in grain production has at best matched each year’s population growth.

The low stocks and strong demand combined to push prices of all cereals to new highs in 2007. At harvest time, the U.S. corn export price was up about 70 percent from the previous year, while the U.S. hard wheat price averaged 65 percent more than a year earlier.

Other key trends in the Vital Signs Grain Update include:

• At 784 million tons, the record 2007 corn harvest was buoyed by growing use of the grain to produce biofuels, which prompted farmers in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina to plant more land for corn. The U.S. alone is responsible for over 40 percent of the global corn harvest and half of world exports.
• The global rice harvest was up slightly to 633 million tons, while wheat also increased modestly (by 2 percent) to 605 million tons.
• Corn, wheat, and rice account for about 85 percent of the global grain harvest by weight, with sorghum, millet, barley, oats, and other less common grains rounding out the total.

Comments in italics by Envirostats author.

- Worldwatch Institute, Dec 12 2007

This is why air pollution in China is a big concern to the rest of the world, even though the study was for the United States.

This is also why air pollution in the United States is a big concern to the rest of the world, and why everybody’s air pollution should be a concern to everybody else.

A lot of the pollution discussed is particulate matter at 2.5 microns to 10 microns, PM2.5 and PM10, respectively, that can cause visibility problems to asthma and other health impacts.

More from the article excerpt below.

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

It has been a decade since University of Washington scientists first pinpointed specific instances of air pollution, including Gobi Desert dust, traversing the Pacific Ocean and adding to the mix of atmospheric pollution already present along the West Coast of North America.

Now a UW researcher is finding that dust from the Gobi and Taklimakan deserts in China and Mongolia is routinely present in the air over the western United States during spring months…

- Science Daily, Dec 14 2007

The source and source story is a study that ranked environmental performance based on climate change performances in 2006, which was a little complicated to try and explain in the headline statistic.

The countries were ranked based on the amount of emissions they produced over the past year, the amount of reductions they made to their emissions levels and the strength of their climate-change policies.

There was no real detail on how much things were weighed, but needless to say, per capita emissions had to be part of the calculations based on some small countries’ output.

The five lowest ranked countries, starting with the worst, were:

• Saudi Arabia
• The United States
• Australia
• Canada
• Luxembourg

That Saudi Arabia was worst is of no surprise to me. They have high overall emissions, never mind per capita. They haven’t done much about it, either. The US and Australia are no surprises, either, but that Canada is that low on the list was a small surprise. I knew we weren’t CO2 saints, but this is a new low for the country. Finally, little Luxembourg is a big surprise. Whatever they’re doing for CO2 emissions, and whatever they’re not doing to curb it, I haven’t heard anything about it, whether CO2 or ecological footprint or otherwise. Their presence is why I said per capita emissions had to be a part of the calculations.

The five best countries were:

• Sweden
• Germany
• Iceland
• Mexico
• India

I don’t know what to make of this list because for countries like Mexico and India, I know about many of their other environmental problems so they have a bad image, but may be quite good for CO2 emissions. Per capita emissions might have helped India be lowest on that list of 56 countries, but I still have a problem because they do have a very large population and much of their energy isn’t clean, either. But whatever. I posted this entry for the headline statistic but could not leave the rest of the story without a comment given some details that might have misled readers.

I’m not sure I’m convinced Germany is second only to Sweden, either, but that again could be based on my knowledge of other Scandanavian environmental situations rather than their CO2 emissions that is biasing my opinion. The source is also German, in part, so it does raise an eyebrow like Spock on Star Trek, but the European But I’ll leave those thoughts at that for your consideration. [Envirostats author]

Canada, with its overall ranking of 53rd out of 56 countries, has fallen from last year, when it was ranked 51st.

“The [Canadian] government is still not making a serious effort to cut greenhouse gas pollution, and that leaves Canada at the back of the pack,” Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute said in a news release.

The Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental organization, contributed to the study.

“The gap between the government’s rhetoric and its action to date severely weakens Canada’s credibility here in Bali,” Bramley said.

‘Hypocrisy in Canada’s approach’

Bramley, in an interview from Bali, said Canada is making unrealistic demands on other countries, considering the poor job it’s doing, according to the study.

Bramley said Canada could have boosted its ranking over last year by at least 20 positions, to the middle of the pack, if it had strengthened its government policies overseeing areas like industrial emissions.

“Minister Baird is taking some highly obstructive positions coming into these negotiations, particularly the kinds of demands that he’s making of developing countries,” Bramley said.

“When we see how poorly Canada is performing on climate change, it really points to a kind of hypocrisy in Canada’s approach.”

Baird and the Conservative government have pledged to reduce Canada’s overall emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020, but environmentalists and opposition members of parliament have attacked this plan because it fails to meet Canada’s Kyoto obligations.

Under Kyoto, which was signed by Canada under a Liberal government in 1998, Canada is expected to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent from 1990 levels by 2012.

Kyoto was ratified by 141 countries, with each having slightly different targets to meet in an effort to reduce overall global emissions by about five per cent from 1990 levels. 

- Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe via the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Dec 7 2007

Some of Sears’ catalogues came from the endangered North American Boreal Forest. The 425 million catalogues, of course, averages well over 1 million catalogues sent out per day.

With the release of its 188-page Wishbook catalog following a 13-year hiatus, Sears is growing more destructive to Endangered Forests at a time when forests, freshwater sources, and wildlife are most threatened. Sears gets a big lump of coal for its non-efforts this year, having done little to indicate that its 20th Century mindset will be reset for a 21st Century era of sustainable business.

On the good side, Patagonia has crafted a paper policy that backs up their reputation for savvy sustainability. They earn a caribou for each of the four criteria evaluated, which is fitting given what these policies will do for caribou whose Canadian Boreal habitat continues to be damaged by companies that don’t make the grade.

Please see Stat 0016 and Commentary 025 for some other catalog statistics for America, the latter also a means to stop getting some catalogs. [Envirostats author]

- Catalog Industry Environmental Scorecard 2007, by Forest Ethics (0.4 MB)

- Catalog Cutdown, Nov 28 2007